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Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

investors.micron.com

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Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#341

Post by dan-bailey »

squigz wrote: post #259
lenkite wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know. Actually, his experience is the standard PC enthusiast experience for the vast majority of DIY'ers in many nations. And is now subject to threat if businesses catering to consumers shut-down.

> Actually, his experience is the standard PC enthusiast experience for the vast majority of DIY'ers in many nations. I have to genuinely question this. I haven't heard of anyone I know buying PC components at a physical store in like 20 years, and I know people from various nations.

Anecdata != data.

That MicroCenter continues to exist tells me that there's at least enough people shopping for parts in meatspace that there's net revenue to be had.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#342

Post by barrkel »

linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

I feel this vibe. It's part of the reason I invested in a monster home workstation - threadripper 9995wx, 768gb ecc ram, 96gb Blackwell pro. I expect it may easily be the last proper home PC I buy that is scaled in line with the scaling that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s.

Increasingly, what we have are mobile terminals - possibly with a dock for monitor connections - for remote big iron. And the continuous push from governments for more control - seemingly synchronous demands for age gating (i.e. requiring IDs) and chat snooping - males me think this remote hardware won't really be yours before long.

Windows, caught up in the LLM mania, is to be left by the wayside too.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#343

Post by AlfredBarnes »

sgnelson wrote: post #93

I feel like the "democratization of technology" is on the back slide. For the longest time, we had more and more access to high end technology at very reasonable price points. Now it feels like if you're not Facebook, Google, OpenAI, etc. etc. computation isn't for you. I hope this is just a blip, but I think there is a trend over the past few years.

100% agree.

A little foil hat conspiracy i supposed, but the big companies saw nobodies become incredibly wealthy over the last decade, and this is the new companies protecting their position by limiting technology.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#344

Post by jack_tripper »

barrkel wrote: post #342
linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

I feel this vibe. It's part of the reason I invested in a monster home workstation - threadripper 9995wx, 768gb ecc ram, 96gb Blackwell pro. I expect it may easily be the last proper home PC I buy that is scaled in line with the scaling that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s. Increasingly, what we have are mobile terminals - possibly with a dock for monitor connections - for remote big iron. And the continuous push f…

The Terry Davis tinfoil-hat version of me has a theory that this wider industry trend of pushing away consumers from general purpose home computers towards only using remote datacenters from locked down mobile/thin edge devices, is supported by both industries and governments because:

Number one, you become a recurring subscription instead of a one and done deal, making it incredibly profitable for industry

And number two, the government can more easily snoop on your data when it's all in the cloud versus a HDD box in your closet.

Granted, I think we're far away from that future, but I do feel that's the future the powers that be desire and they can use various mechanism to force that behavior, like convenience, and pricing, like for example making PC parts too expensive for consumers and subsidizing cloud and mobile devices to accelerate the move, and once enough consumers only know how to use Apple or Google devices they'll be less inclined to spend more money to build a PC and learn what a Linux is.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#345

Post by thewebguyd »

futuraperdita wrote: post #181
mschuster91 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those in power want the opposite, they want to keep control. So we don't get to have open devices, we get pushed to thin clients & locked boot loaders While it's undeniable that MAFIAA et al have been heavily lobbying for that crap... the problem is, there are lots of bad actors out there as well. I 'member the 00s/10s, I made good money cleaning up people's computers after they fell for the wrong porn or warez sit…

Is this not just "with freedom comes responsibility" applied to technology? Often the freedom to do something means that, when given that sovereignty and missing the requisite experience, that means you also end up with the freedom to harm yourself (whether through a misunderstanding of a danger or just simple error.) Do we want to accept that as a potential consequence, or have someone else choose for us what conseq…

> Do we want to accept that as a potential consequence, or have someone else choose for us what consequences we are allowed to accept?

Unfortunately, I think the old guard here is dying out and the majority want someone else choosing for them, which is why all the age verification & chat control-like bills have broad bipartisan support.

I'm in the "with freedom comes responsibility" camp. Obviously we should build secure systems, but our devices shouldn't be impenetrable by their own user. The "security" we are getting now is just security against the user having the freedom to do as they wish with their devices and software.

The cultural zeitgeist surrounding internet and computing freedom has changed to be in favor of more control and censorship. Not sure how we can stop it.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#346

Post by deltoidmaximus »

tkfoss wrote: post #40
RedShift1 wrote: post #29

Their MX500 series SSDs were just king of price, performance and reliability. I even installed them in industrial PCs with intense vibrations and large temperature cycles, they're still chugging along like it's nothing.

Just bought one last week, sadly not many options left for 2.5" SSDs

I've been reduced to buying samsung 970 evos. The supply of DRAM supporting SATA SSDs has really dried up.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#347

Post by brk »

dan-bailey wrote: post #341
squigz wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, his experience is the standard PC enthusiast experience for the vast majority of DIY'ers in many nations. I have to genuinely question this. I haven't heard of anyone I know buying PC components at a physical store in like 20 years, and I know people from various nations.

Anecdata != data. That MicroCenter continues to exist tells me that there's at least enough people shopping for parts in meatspace that there's net revenue to be had.

Microcenter has a total of 29 stores across the US. Yankee Candle has almost 10x as many locations (240).

Yes, Microcenter "exists", but primarily through selective cultivation of their locations. From a pure market footprint perspective, they are outclassed by a candle company, and many other niche businesses.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#348

Post by stalfosknight »

junon wrote: post #255
gjvc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know why you are getting downvoted, as power planning is a real problem right now when planning new data center builds.

Because it's a meme response, which generally don't go over well on HN.

It's accurate though.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#349

Post by seanmcdirmid »

angoragoats wrote: post #331
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for sure. But it’s they’ve made it the norm, I don’t think I’m going to buy a more traditional computer again (unified RAM judt works so well for local AI), and the computer markers are going to adopt it completely eventually.

Hard disagree on it working well for local AI - all the memory bandwidth in the world doesn’t matter when the GPU it’s connected to is middling in performance compared to dedicated options. Give me one (or several) 3090/4090/5090 any day of the week over a Mac.

I’ve got an M3 Max with 64G, and can run larger models well than a single 5090. Yes, the GPU isn’t as fast, but I have a lot more memory and my GPUs still don’t suck that badly.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#350

Post by abustamam »

barrkel wrote: post #342
linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

I feel this vibe. It's part of the reason I invested in a monster home workstation - threadripper 9995wx, 768gb ecc ram, 96gb Blackwell pro. I expect it may easily be the last proper home PC I buy that is scaled in line with the scaling that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s. Increasingly, what we have are mobile terminals - possibly with a dock for monitor connections - for remote big iron. And the continuous push f…

Whoa that definitely sounds like a monster rig! Out of curiosity, how much did that cost? Blackwell alone can be $10k+! It's definitely an investment, especially since it may soon become a relic, not in terms of specs, but in terms what manufacturers will actually end up making.
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